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100It's a stunning Roman triumph.
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100It's that very rare feeling that you're settling into a movie whose individual elements are so finely attuned they fuse into a singular construct of pure entertainment.
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91What matters for today's hero is the good fight, and Gladiator KOs us with a doozy.
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91It lives up to the hype. Gladiator has its creaky moments, but it delivers a particular kind of visceral historical spectacle that movie audiences haven't seen in decades.
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90Glorious, a colossus of rousing action and ferocious fun.
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88Has the kind of super-cinematic qualities and bravura acting that make up for almost anything.
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88If there's a soft spot in your heart for the sword-&-sandal epic -- and from the star rating above, I think you can guess where I stand -- then you'll swoon with giddy delight over Gladiator.
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88An exhilarating, sweeping epic that begs to be seen on the largest possible screen.
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84Combining a seething physicality with enough weary nobility and tightly checked rage for a dozen wronged heroes, (Crowe) provides the movie's vital center of gravity without looming over his co-stars.
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80Quite a good movie--a big, fat, rousing, intelligent, daring, retro, many-adjective-requiring entertainment.
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80John Mathieson's widescreen cinematography is magnificent, and the pacing across 2½ hours is well modulated.
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80One extended guilty pleasure.
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75Lacks emotional depth and sweep -- but the movie still delivers the type of rousing, large-scale adventure that marked the best films of its kind
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75At 2 1/2 hours, Gladiator is a long ride, but it doesn't drag.
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75As formulaic, but occasionally outré multiplex-bound behemoths go, Gladiator is a foaming beast.
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75Frequently gory, often talky, almost always watchable, never quite thrilling, Gladiator is a cold and big film that mixes solid acting with cheesy digital effects and sweaty action with stultifying chatter.
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70Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances.
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70The heroism and the tigers and the epic grandeur all leave behind the flavor of cynicism.
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70The warm humanizing element in all the cool stuff is Crowe.
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70The fight scenes are dynamic, intricately choreographed, and downright exciting.
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70What elevates Gladiator to the near-greatness it occasionally achieves is the performance of Russell Crowe as Maximus.
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63Instead of the heat of humanity, what lingers on in the mind is the cool of the computerized effects.
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63It epitomizes the kind of high-profile bloodshed we now expect to herald the hazy, lazy, blockbuster-fixated days of summer.
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63It ends with the corniest convention of all: an absurd mano-a-mano between good and evil.
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60Filled with brilliant filmmaking and features outstanding performances, but it's neither profound enough nor pop enough to be great -- it's mournful, serious, beautiful and, finally, pointless.
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60The digital animation is far more evident here than in "The Phantom Menace."
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60Like an aging athlete who knows how to husband strength and camouflage weaknesses, it makes the most of what it does well and hopes you won't notice its limitations.
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60Grandiose and silly.
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60The script by producer David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson is serviceable but not exactly inspired.
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50It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.
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50Scott's filmmaking is as blunt and bullying as the mayhem it portrays.
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50Well, it's better than "The Phantom Menace."
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50It's a loud, obnoxious, and pleasant-enough entertainment, but hardly the soaring tale of one man's struggle that it was so clearly envisioned to be.
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50The soul of Gladiator is made sluggish by a maddening lack of suspense.
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40For all its grandeur, Gladiator is a canned experience, a film that flails around awkwardly trying to find a reason to exist, or at least a compelling story to tell.
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40Gladiator's combination of grim sanctimony and drenching, Dolby-ized dismemberings left me appalled.
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30Friends, Washingtonians, countrymen, I come not to praise Gladiator but to bury it.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 83 out of 98
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Mixed: 5 out of 98
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Negative: 10 out of 98
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jakep10
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"Gladiator" is just your average Rome summer flick, between all those massive action and masterful dialogue.
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10This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.